Shortly after running its first paid ads on Twitter this spring, cannabis conglomerate Curaleaf saw its following on the platform balloon by 300%, while its competitor Trulieve got a 214% boost in its web traffic.

Senior leaders at both companies hailed the newfound ability to buy media on the popular but problematic social channel, which broke ground in February as the first mainstream platform to accept ads from weed marketers.

Trulieve’s marketing has “already started to change perceptions and normalize cannabis use,” said chief marketing officer Gina Collins, who told Adweek that “this is only the beginning” of the nascent relationship.

With results and reaction like this, it may be easy to assume the Twitter experiment is a rousing success. That would be premature, though, according to many cannabis brands that called Twitter’s initial guidelines too restrictive and confusing, with scant data to justify the cost and little support in navigating the process.

This kind of “meaningful feedback” has spawned a new set of rules, with Twitter announcing last week it will “create even more opportunity” for the cannabis industry, per the company’s updated blog post tweeted by its cannabis sales and partnership executive Alexa Alianiello.

Twitter’s policy—take two—says weed marketers can now advertise in more parts of the country, across medical and recreational markets, and may show their products for the first time, as long as the THC-spiked goods are enclosed in packaging.

So, problems solved? Not exactly.

Groundbreaking but ‘anti-climactic’

While still shouting out the significance of Twitter’s new openness—optics are important as federally illegal cannabis continues to battle old stereotypes and advertising bans—many industry players remain unconvinced that Twitter is a good investment.

“We were all excited when the platform opened up,” Jeff Ragovin, chief commercial officer at data marketing firm Fyllo, told Adweek. “But it turned out to be anti-climactic.”

Pagine: 1 2 3